I am new to all of this and have done a lot of reading on using colloidal Silver to change part of a plant from female to male. My question is this, can I harvest a photo period, reveg it and then spray the colloidal silver to change parts of it to male?
There are 2 plants of the same age that will be harvested together and re-vegged together. So I can spray 1 the plants daily and it should pollinate the other right?
How long should I allow the plant to re-veg before beginning to spray? Am I looking for a time marker or a general size marker before spraying?
I appreciate any and all information on this issue and apologize if I missed a similar topic that I could have gotten the answer from.
Have no clue about using chemicals to change sex.
I can pop males with just lighting and stress screw-ups.
Re-veging may cause it to change (Tent lighting long/flip/back to long veg hours will increase your chances of making males. IMExperience, sadly). Good luck.
Yes once you re veg your plants and get them to a adequate size like you would the first time you grew them originally then flip to flower and begin spraying what ever plant you want to reverse daily until you begin seeing sacks form then spray for a couple more days then stop just dont over spray the plant you want to pollinate as you dont want it forming sacks also lol you can also collect and store that feminized pollen to pollinate other plants for different crosses and more feminized beans
Thank you for the info. Harvesting 3/4 of 1 plant today and 3/4.of the other tomorrow then I will flip to 24hrs on. I still have plenty of seeds at the moment but I’m trying to get the process down.
Worth noting you’ll want to put the plant on the 12/12 light cycle right before you start spraying. (I usually start applying STS the day I flip the lights.)
I use silver thiosulfate, so does Repins. It takes less frequent applications and less time overall in my experience. Other folks have lots of success with colloidal silver. Just not me.
@LiesGrows@Graysin Thanks for the input. I did some reading of other threads last night and did end up purchasing STS. 8t will arrive by in about a week.
Is it better to spray 1 entire plant in order to produce sacks to pollinate the other plant or would 1 or 2 branches on each plant allow them both to self pollinate ?
With the plants in an enclosed space does pollination require active participation by the grower or will sacks opening +fans in the room take care of it?
@DEEPDIVERDAVE
Thank you for your response. What you said is another thing I came across in threads on the forum. However, I am looking to nail down a process that will be very reliable (nearly certain). Though you did reiterate for this new grower how to avoid unintentional hermaphrodites, so thank you.
Either method will probably work. Manually harvested pollen can be individually disseminated or air dispersed. I do the manual route (less pollen floating and possibly interfering with future grows). Specific branches can be targeted, vice the whole plant.
Seed recovery is easier on smaller quantities, vice maybe everywhere, some.
I spray one branch on one plant, and it’s usually more than enough pollen. A little goes a very long way.
I would only spray one, because that way you’re certain of lineage (I.e. you know who the “daddy” is) - if you spray a cola on each plant, then who pollinated who is a major question. If it’s all the same strain maybe that’s fine, but even plants in the same strain can exhibit wildly different characteristics. If it’s just one pollen donor, you know with certainty the result of the pollen x any of the other female plants.
Shake the male flowers one cluster at a time over top of the box and harvest the pollen that way. Then apply the pollen to the other plants with a paintbrush or qtip. You may have pollen left over that you can use to make more seeds at a later date if you store it well (cool dry place).
They don’t need to be, for sure. You can just throw them in some water for a day or two and have germination well under way. Some people suggest that cold stratification improves germination rates but I’ve not had issues with seeds that fail to germinate.
You guys have been super helpful. I will try to document and take pics of this process using the info I’ve been given and update the thread in the future. Hopefully the pics, and the step by step write up will help another person in the future. Even if I fail.
